They may lapse at
times. They may get through a university education, attend nightclubs, listen
to the same music all the other kids their age do-- but there's still a ticking
time bomb inside their heads. And that bomb is the same one that appears as the
lit fuse on the turban of the cartoon
Mohammad.

An average and unassuming Muslim next door
or down the street can douse the fuse himself by repudiating Islam. He can
convert to Christianity, to Judaism, to Buddhism, to Scientology, or even
become an atheist. Apostasy is absolutely imperative, but comes with some risk because
Islam, the “religion of peace,” decrees the death of an apostate.

Honor killings of girls and women who are “seduced”
by Western cultural and social norms are a result of a partial or full repudiation
of Islam by their victims. The killings are committed by average and unassuming
Muslim parents and relatives. The perpetrators preserve their ethereal “honor”;
the victims lose their lives.

Still, repudiation entails some very
serious thinking and reflection. But repudiation in some form is necessary to
douse that fuse or to defuse the ticking mechanism inside his turbaned mind
before it eventually explodes the bomb. Only the prospective apostate knows which
color wire needs to be snipped.

For otherwise he may take the car jihad
route, or plant bombs among throngs of Marathon spectators or Christmas
shoppers, or toss fire bombs at passing cars. Or shoot two policemen in cold
blood as they have lunch in a patrol car in Brooklyn. Or murder two hostages
inside an Australian chocolate shop. Lately, and too often, it’s the ordinary-looking
Muslims who have been waging “lone wolf” jihad against Westerners. They haven’t
telegraphed their intentions by wearing suicide vests or toting AK-47’s and
wearing ski-masks in public as they approach their targets. They infiltrate
crowds or stroll past a café and do what they came to do. Destroy.

But it’s the ticking time bomb metaphor of
Greenfield’s that piqued my resolve to offer additional comments about how and
why “lone wolf” terrorists are not “alone.”

Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin, in her December
18th FSM column, “Man
Haron Monis’ Politically Incorrect Developmental Problem,” argues that many
terrorists, such as the Sydney, Australia chocolate shop hostage-taker and
killer, or the Chechen
jihadists, are somewhat autistic, are terrified of being alone, are bereft
of or derogate the basic norms of social behavior, and as a consequence are unable
to “bond” or empathize with anyone, especially not with their victims.Their victims are simply objects to be
controlled and destroyed. After all, one can’t “bond” with a rock, except
perhaps when one is using it to bash someone’s brains out.

[Jihadis]… are
obsessed with the infidel and their feminization of the Other as well as
bonding to hard objects such as weapons.

Just think of the
Taliban attack on the Pakistani
military school. They might brag that their [own] children are jewels but
no one else's are - for them the Pakistani victims were merely objects in their
poorly developed minds. Jihadis harbor a terror of the other. They do not know
how to relate to anyone who is not exactly like them. They are the ultimate
narcissists. They did not learn the corollary to "Some of these things are
just like the other" which is "Some of these things and people are
different and that is okay." No, we must become Muslim just like them as
they are terrified to be alone.

I purchase some of Kobrin’s argument, but
not all of it. Perhaps there is some truth in Kobrin’s thesis that a terrorist
wishes to instill in his victims the terror he feels himself at the sight of
those who appear to have lived successfully. He wishes to reduce his victims to
the metaphysical state of A.E. Houseman’s alienated
manqué:

"I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made."

Islam gives that manqué an excuse and a
chance to unmake the world he never
made.

In the final analysis, however, whether or
not an Islamic terrorist, or even a non-terrorist, is autistic, developmentally
arrested, or has developed sociopathic, pathological, or psychotic symptoms or
habits, diagnosed or not, he chooses to take his actions based on his
fundamental epistemology and metaphysics. If they are dark and obsessed enough,
that will be enough to drive him to become what is commonly called a “lone
wolf” terrorist.

What the “lone wolf” terrorist craves is
something to fill the void of his internal being, a cause, a religion, or a
movement that will dictate his actions and his purpose for existing. HIs
“internal being” acts like a stellar black hole. It sucks everything within
range of its gravity into its crushing mass and obliterates everything’s
identity. Unable to form his own first-hand values, he borrows values from
others. HIs nihilistic, malevolent universe “soul”—that hunk of venomous glop –
is naturally attracted to anything that exhorts him to help “change the world” –
or to take revenge on it because it does not automatically supply him with a
reason for living.

Islam does that: It supplies anyone born
into it, or anyone who choses to convert to it, with an automatic reason for living.
Islam doesn’t require deep thinking or reflection. Islam punishes it.

As I remarked in “’Lone
Wolf’ Terrorists are Not “Alone,” the Islamic “lone
wolf” terrorist seeks the company of his ilk. He wants to “belong” to
something, or to some tribe that seems to be having a consequence in the world
he never made. Of all the religions that ask one to give oneself to a higher
being and its purposes, Islam is the most demanding and thorough. It demands
that one regard oneself as superfluous, as inconsequential, as selfless. What
better creed could an essentially selfless person be attracted to like a filing
to a magnet but Islam? He “gives” himself to Allah.

As I remarked in my previous column, he
need not even come into contact with his ilk. All he need do is absorb all the
nihilist, Islamic calls to jihad on such Internet sites as “Inspire” that urge
Muslims to take up arms, even if it’s only with a carving knife or a machete,
against Western infidels.As Pamela
Geller on Atlas
Shrugs reports:

The latest issue of
the slick jihad magazine, “Inspire”, is devoted to lone jihadi attacks (or as
the media calls them lone wolves). The Islamic State’s recently released video
called for more bloody lone wolf jihadi attacks.

Clearly Muslims
across the US, Canada and Europe are “inspired” by the Islamic State, al Qaeda
and the Qur’an to wage jihad. They are taking their marching orders quite
seriously as we have witnessed this past week alone – the cold-blooded murder
of two NYPD cops by a jihadi, three distinct “allahu akbar” attacks in France
in as many days, and thwarted attacks in Denmark, Canada and the UK.

What’s fascinating is
the Asperger-like insistence by Obama, the EU, and the media that these attacks
are not Islamic or religiously motivated. It would be laughable if there
weren’t so many dead and bloodied bodies.

The treacly, fear-driven divorcing by many
American and European politicians of Islam from the piles of bodies and smoking
ruins and carnage produced by Islamic terrorists and ISIS and the Taliban is
worth another column. As for President Barack Obama, his affinity for Islam is
too well known to comment on here (I’ve discussed his malodorous policies and
actions in past columns); his intention to “accelerate” the “transfer” or
“release” of Gitmo
detainees is, I’m certain, motivated by his own “lone wolf” malignity.
There is a proven record that those already released are
certain to return to the “battlefield” to kill more Americans and plan more
jihad. He must know this. This knowledge damns him.

To help gauge the “internal workings” of a
“lone wolf” terrorist – one who acts on his own at the behest of his inner
demons and answers the call to rampant or random jihad – read the life stories
of Ted Bundy, the serial
killer, Richard Speck,
and Charles Manson.
Speck and Manson were not serial killers. In fact, Manson did not kill anyone,
he ordered his Family to commit murders. To his Family, he acted as a kind of
Mohammad whose example must be followed without question and who must be
obeyed. Speck had no “family” of cultists; he was a shiftless “ne’er-do-well” who
raped and murdered on opportunity. Bundy, whose rape-murder-dismemberment spree
produced at least thirty victims, was evil incarnate.

But
the common denominator between the three men is that they lived empty, aimless,
itinerate lives, in whom grew a festering pustule of resentment and hatred for everyone and
everything. Their nihilist criminal careers presaged those of “lone wolf’ Islamic
terrorists.

Monday, December 22, 2014

A “lone wolf” is still as much a predator
as it would be in a pack. Its predatory, programmed instincts, behavior and
actions are shared with those of a pack. It may be a “lone wolf” because of
conflicts between it and the wolf pack. But it is still a wolf.

Wikipedia notes about the behavior of the
“lone wolf”:

As an animal, a lone wolf is a wolf that lives
independently rather than with others as a member of a pack.

In the animal kingdom, lone wolves are
typically older wolves driven from the pack, perhaps by the breeding male, or are
young adults in search of new territory. Many young wolves between the ages of
1 and 4 years leave their family to search for a pack of their own (this has
the effect of preventing inbreeding), as in typical wolf packs there is only
one breeding pair.

Some wolves will simply remain lone wolves;
as such, these lone wolves may be stronger, more aggressive and far more
dangerous than the average wolf that is a member of a pack. However, lone
wolves have difficulty hunting, as wolves’ favorite prey, large ungulates, are
nearly impossible for a single wolf to bring down alone. Instead, lone wolves
will generally hunt smaller animals and scavenge carrion.

“Lone wolves” or packs of wolves kill to
survive. They eat their prey.

“Lone wolf” jihadists and terrorists, by
the same token, are still Islamic supremacists. They need not be “soldiers” of
any particular group, such as Hamas, ISIS, Hezbollah, the Taliban, the Muslim
Brotherhood, or Al-Qaeda. They need not run with a pack. They need not have had
any close or social contact with any of those groups, other than perhaps
attending a mosque that preaches violent jihad against the West.

Many “lone wolf” terrorists are converts
driven to “prove” their new religious convictions. Their “independence” of
action may not even be approved by any of those groups, although their
fascination with Islam may be fueled by what a “lone wolf” sees those groups
approve of as seen on the Internet and in the MSM in the way of beheadings,
dismemberment of victims’ bodies, rapes,
and “random” killings. Not to mention the chest-beating claims by terrorists
that Islam will rule the world. All this answers an element in a “lone wolf’s”
makeup, a malevolent loneliness. He responds.
He is not alone.

“Lone wolf” terrorists do not kill to
survive. They kill for the sake of killing. Islamic terrorists, alone or in packs or
gangs, are in essence nihilists. They boast:

"We love death
more than you love life." – Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13
and wounded 30 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, TX

"We love death
more than you love life." – Adis Medunjanin, part of a 911 call made
in New York City after crashing his car while fleeing from federal agents who
had confiscated his passport

Anyone doubting the Islamic fixation on
death and its compulsion to destroy life, should see Palestinian Media Watch’s
sampling of “death wishes” here.
The death wishes one sees there are endemic throughout Islam. They are not
unique to the “Palestinians.”They are
permanently etched in Koranic Sharia law
and in the Muslim mentality.

Here is a short list of murders committed
by “lone wolf” Islamic terrorists:

British Muslim “grooming”
gangs, which are little more than Islamic wolf packs following the dictates
of the Koran and Hadith on the status of “captured”
infidel or non-Muslim girls and women, and which do not operate under the aegis
or orders of any recognized terrorist gang. These gangs can be said to be
sub-tribes of Muslims. Their purpose is to kill any sense of personal identity
in their victims, to dehumanize them.

This list could go on for pages. Here is a
sampling of the West’s kneejerk denials that “lone wolves” are not associated
with the “religion of peace.” These and countless other “authorities” claim to
be perplexed by the common denominator between violent crime committed by
Muslims… and Islam:

Robert Boyce, NYPD’s Chief of Detectives,
on the murder of two patrolmen by a Muslim:

Late this
afternoon, the NYPD’s Chief of Detectives, Robert Boyce, knocked down published
reports that Brinsley may have had ties to a militant prison gang, but said
he’d made anti-government statements on social media.

“There is one where
he burns a flag and made some statements. There’s others with talks of anger
for the police. He specifically mentions Michael Brown and Eric Garner…. Right
now we have no gang affiliation at all attributed to this man. He has no
tattoos to suggest anything of it and he has no religious statements that we
found on Instagram at all. None whatsoever.”

Meanwhile, in Australia, Manny Conditsis,
the former attorney of Man Haron Monis, the chocolate shop hostage-taker and
murderer, offered a weazely explanation for Monis’s criminality:

Monis' former
lawyer Manny Conditsis describes him as a 'damaged goods individual' with an
ideology that clouds his common sense.

'This is a one-off
random individual,' Mr Conditsis said. 'It's not a concerted terrorism event or
act. It's a damaged goods individual who's done something outrageous. 'His
ideology is just so strong and so powerful that it clouds his vision for common
sense and objectiveness.'

Ayn Rand, the novelist/philosopher, had
some keen observations about “lone wolves.” In the “Ayn Rand Letter” of June, 1973:

In my last two Letters
["The Missing Link"] I discussed the anti-conceptual mentality and
its social (tribal) manifestations. All tribalists are anti-conceptual in
various degrees, but not all anti-conceptual mentalities are tribalists.
Some are lonewolves
(stressing that species' most predatory characteristics).

The majority of
such wolves are frustrated tribalists, i.e., persons rejected by the tribe (or
by the people of their immediate environment): they are too unreliable to abide
by conventional rules, and too crudely manipulative to compete for tribal
power. Since a perceptual mentality cannot provide a man with a way of
survival, such a person, left to his own devices, becomes a kind of
intellectual hobo, roaming about as an eclectic second-hander or brain-picker,
snatching bits of ideas at random, switching them at whim, with only one
constant in his behavior: the drifting from group to group, the need to cling
to people, any sort of people, and to manipulate them. [Bold type mine.]

Bear in mind that Rand was writing in 1973,
long before Islam raised its Medusa’s head to wage its non-stop war on the West
and on the world. (The first
Islamic-related plane hijacking took place in February 1972.) The “lone
wolf,” she explains, is basically selfless, that is, he has no anchored or
permanent sense of self-identity. HIs “self” flits from religion to group to
cause in search of something that will give him a sense of self. A genuine
self, she writes, has a set of non-lethal personal or second-hand values to
which he is fully or only nominally loyal.

The jihadist’s search will end, however,
when he alights on a “cause” or a group or a religion that promises some
measure of “drama.” The search will flail about governed by the individual’s
core metaphysical premise: death, or
killing that which it cannot be. It searches for targets imbued with the
perceived, enviable aura of successful living. The terrorist will feel “real”
only when he is wielding life-or-death power over the living. Being a
ready-made Muslim/jihadist, or converting to Islam promises to reward him his
own aura of importance, especially if he decides to engage in murder and
mayhem. I frankly doubt that any run-of-the-mill “peaceful” Muslim genuinely
believes that being a suicidal “martyr” will convey him immediately to Paradise
and 72 virgins. But, in Islam, to doubt that is a serious, fatwa-earning crime.

Identifying the amoral character of a “lone wolf,” Rand noted:

Without personal
values, a man can have no sense of right or wrong. The tribal lone wolf
is an amoralist all the way down….

The amoralist's
implicit patter of self-appraisal (which he seldom identifies or admits) is:
"I am good because it's me."

Beyond the
age of about three to five (i.e., beyond the perceptual level of mental development),
this is not an expression of pride or self-esteem, but of the opposite: of a
vacuum – of a stagnant, arrested mentality confessing its impotence to achieve
any personal value or virtue.

To an observer, an amoralist or “lone wolf”
may appear to have values and be moved by them. But the appearance is merely an
elaborately constructed façade raised over a lifetime to hide the truth from
any and all observers – and from the amoralist himself.

Citing a number of rationalizations of how an
amoralist can convince himself and others of his “goodness,” Rand concluded:

But even such
shoddy substitutes for morality are only a pretense: the amoralist does not
believe that "I am good because it's me." That implicit
policy is his protection against his deepest, never-to-be-identified
conviction: "I am no good through and through." (Italics Rand’s)

To sum up, the “lone wolf” Islamic terrorist
knows that he is at root irredeemably evil,
that his soul is nothing more than a hunk of poisonous glop, which he dare not
contemplate for any length of time.

All those suicide bombers, all those
suicide attack squads willing to butcher dozens of adult and children’s lives
as callously as reaping wheat or mowing a lawn, such as during the Peshawar
school massacre, all the killing and destruction committed by them and
fellow killers, especially at the price of their own lives, reveling their victims’ screams of terror and pain,
savoring the bloody carnage – is but their own nihilist attempt to escape alone or in the company of fellow
killers the self-knowledge that they are
evil, of no value to themselves or to
anyone else.

Saturday, December 20, 2014

Last night, in my dreams, I took an
imaginary junket around the world with every expectation that I would return
alive and in one piece. Or at least not wake up screaming and in a cold sweat.
I have recorded this adventure for the amusement of readers.

Actually, I didn’t travel with my late (but
not late enough) biological aunt, although she did appear very briefly at the
beginning of the dream, her creepy face leering at me from across the great
divide of reality and fantasy. I’ve always tried to forget her face. She strongly
resembled Madame
Blavatsky in “spirit,” as well. When I met her for the first time, her
first question to me was if I believed in séances. After making a face of
incredulity – and I’ve been told I have a very expressive and forbidding face –
I said no. This, time, however, I must have made a “Yech!” sound in my sleep,
so her face went poof in a puff of phlogiston, and she never returned.

Or was it phostrogen? I never could get those two straight.

My first stop was Washington, D.C., which I
last visited by train in 1975, and took away as my sole souvenirs a set of
stainless steel salt and pepper shakers. They were the only worthwhile things I
could find in any of the shops. I still have them.

This time, however, I was stopped just
inside the Beltway by a Capitol Police SWAT team in a Metro parking lot. It
turned out that the NSA
had long ago planted a GPS tracker in my trunk, and so the heavily clad and
armed local Federales had received an
electronic heads-up of my impending arrival. After being shaken, stirred,
groped, and bar-coded, they informed me that I was banned from the city, that I
could no longer enter the Capitol because of my many dozens of columns that
roasted President Obama on an iron turning spit, which had earned me a “Red
Flag Level 4” category of a “person of interest.”

I was warned that if I ever attempted to
enter the city again, I would be arrested and sentenced without a hearing to
labor for five years with an ankle bracelet as a bouncer for the Chicken Ranch
brothel in Pahrump, Nevada, to intercept wandering souls (or escapees) from the
NSA data collection facility in Bluffdale, Utah.

Next, rather abruptly I appeared in London.
I don’t know how I got there, because I no longer fly. I vaguely recalled
working my way to Britain as a relief chef on a tramp steamer. Here, I was
immediately accosted by the police. I just materialized in Heathrow Airport,
and was scanned with an electronic wand by a Customs person in a burqa firmly
secured by a yellow straw boater with a purple
band.

The wand made a horrible screeching sound,
like old time air raid sirens during the London blitz. The burqa entity mumbled
in a deep male voice something from behind its black sheath: “كلواضح!“My Arabic is rusty, but I don’t think it
meant, “All clear!”It sounded more
like, “أنتكافرالقذرة! الجواربالخاصةبكلاتبق!““You filthy kaffir! Your socks don’t match!”
But don’t hold me to that.

The wand must have been computer-linked to
Britain’s Government
Communications Headquarters (the equivalent of the NSA), because some seconds
later I was surrounded by heavily clad and armed Transportation and Security
Administration personnel and representatives from MI5, MI6, and what seemed to
be a shimmering hologram of Theresa May, the
Home Secretary (not the glamour model). I guessed she was too busy to show up
herself. Her white hair looked as though she’d just stepped out of the shower –
she was wrapped in a towel – and hadn’t time to blow-dry it, butI can recognize moussed hair from a 100
yards.

Leashed ferrets from the Metropolitan
Police’s crack Drug and Explosives Detection Units sniffed around my ankles and
other body parts for dangerous or illegal contraband, dogs having been
cashiered from all British law enforcement duties on the complaints of Muslims who
regard dogs as “filthy.” (They should
talk!)

One of the ferrets squeaked an alarm: He
found a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes in a shirt pocket. Another squeaked; he
found my Ronsonol lighter-fluid loaded Zippo in a pants pocket. The TSA fellows
removed these items from my person, together with a prized Waterman pen.

And, wouldn’t you know it? Apparently my
name is in the Brits’ “persons of especial interest” database, as well, because
the faux Mrs. May produced an
official-looking document from beneath her towel, snapped it open, and
proceeded to read me the riot act.

“Because you have
been demonstrably connected with other persons of an Islamophobic color and
character, such as Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, Geert Wilders, Steve Emerson,
Michael Savage, and numerous other persons of that discredited ilk, and,
because you have penned an Islamophobic novel, The
Black Stone, and published tens if not hundreds of scurrilous and
defamatory political columns that have been deemed Islamophobic, bigoted, inflammatory,
and racist, including a separately published screed, Islam’s
Reign of Terror, you therefore and henceforth also have been
permanently prohibited from lawful entry into Great Britain, lest your presence
and likely public statements be found hateful and offensive to Asians
and provoke domestic disturbances.”

Mrs. May refolded her document, squinted at
me fiercely, and asked: “What have you to say to these facts, sir?”

I shrugged and answered, ”I think you need grooming.”

The Customs entity in the burqa made an odd
muffled sound beneath the black cloth – it might have been raspberries – and
threw a rock at me. The ferrets squeaked ferociously.

Mrs. May scowled and snorted as only a Home
Secretary could, and flicked the document in the air. “Be gone, ye of little
faith!”

Before I could retort, “Actually, none,” I
was whisked away to Marseilles, France, and found myself standing near a dock
and a yacht. Up a steep hill and some stone steps, a sign in bright blue
letters splattered with sea gull droppings read, Quaide Cocaïne. Beneath that
one was a smaller one. Interdiction de fumer!How did I know this was the Port of
Marseilles ?

Because in another blink, I was face to
face with Gene Hackman as Detective Popeye Doyle from The French Connection II. He
was there in pursuit of the master criminal/dope dealer who got away in The French Connection I. “Hey, mister!”
he asked, running towards me, waving an arm wildly at me, “You speak Frog?” He
was in a disheveled state, with his goofy hat on backwards, his trousers
beneath the knees in tatters, and his tennis shoes were untied and squished
with every step.

Hackman groaned, made a face, and belted me
once. Then he suddenly drew a small revolver from his jacket, looked over my
shoulder, rested the gun on it, and fired. In my dreams, I have rear-view
vision, and so I saw that he’d put a hole in the head of a blue burqa-clad
entity whose sparkling sheath was firmly secured on its head by a ring of
plastic bags filled with some white stuff. It had clutched a dagger and had
been ready to stab me in the back. I didn’t think the plastic bags contained
flour or confectionary sugar or sea salt.

The blue burqa-clad entity dropped out of
sight as through a trap door, moaning in ecstasy, and up popped a pinch-faced,
sour-looking uniformed French Customs inspector in an imposing and overly
decorated kepi. He shouted at Hackman, wagging a finger, “Vous ne pouvez pas tirer musulmans en France! Il est contre la loi!” (“Shooting
Muslims is not allowed!”)

The Customs man snorted at this, got into a
protracted shouting match with Hackman, each assaulting the other with rude
gesticulations and obscene deprecations, but abandoned Hackman when the actor paused to light up a Gitane.

The Customs man turned and jerked me around
by my shoulder and said in guttural English, visible clouds of garlic
enveloping my face and causing tears to roll down my cheeks, “Monsieur! Your
French is execrable! Porcine américaine!You are banned from France, pour toujours et à jamais! You have written severalbooks that offend our loyal immigrant
citizens!”
He paused to jab a finger on my chest. “Our Direction
générale de la sécurité extérieure has been auditing your books, Monsieur!
They are not halal!Nous avons déclarélesinsultant etdonc ilssont interdits! They are
slanderous! Calomnieuse!Banned, you
understand?? Comprende??»

Before
I could reply, and in impeccable Frog yet, “Vous pouvez embrasser mes grains!“ (“You may kiss my grits!”), he very
grandly raised a hand, snapped his fingers once….

…and presto! I was transported to Moscow!

I stood shivering in the middle of a
snow-covered Red Square. It’s winter, you know. Russian winters have bite. There
in front of me was Vladimir Putin, bare-chested, sitting astride a Clydesdale,
doing jumping jacks without jumping, holding a Siberian tiger and a Russian bear in
each hand by the scruffs of their necks. He espied me and dropped the suffering
animals, which scampered away emitting pathetic whines and howls of relief. He
gazed down at me with those frigid
blue eyes. “Advance, my American poodle.”

The hackles on my neck stood at attention.
I spat back, “Think again, McDougal! I’m not your poodle!” I didn’t intend the
alliteration. It just came out that way.

Putin rested his hands on the horn of his
silver saddle and leaned forward. He said with a mocking chuckle, “Think again,
Mr. Obama.”

Mentally, I frowned and exclaimed,
“What…??” Magically, a hand mirror appeared in my nearly frost-bitten fingers,
which were now…brown!. I looked into
it, and gasped. Good God! I looked like Obama, except for the glasses! Even my
ears had grown! What tricks one’s mind can play on…one’s mind!

Thatmoment, I began entertaining the possibility that perhaps Immanuel Kant
was right, that our senses distort what we see and hear and touch, which are
already distortions of the true reality.

But I shook my head, and exclaimed, “Nah!”

I looked up. Putin had dismounted and stood
in front of me. He was a full head shorter, the top of his neatly barbered head
an inch and a half short of my chin. He looked up and drilled me with those
cold eyes. “You are the secret author of a silly but libelous spy novel, A
Crimson Overture, which casts poisonous and malicious aspersions on the
Party of my past. Your nom de plume
never fooled us! We know you are the author. My foreign
intelligence apparatus has been observing you for years. We know that all your golfing and
fundraising appearances were performed by a double, while you yourself wrote
slanderous fiction In the Oval Office!”

Putin sighed and shook his head. “What a
disappointment, Mr. Obama! That you,
with your irreproachable ideological pedigree, so skillfully hidden from public
view, should betray…our cause!” The
dictator straightened his shoulders. “I have decreed that no novel of yours may
be bought in Russia. Possession of one will result in a stay in Lubyanka Prison.”

Again, the hackles of my neck rose. “Look, you
recidivist Communist,” I replied, “I’m not Obama!”

Putin clucked his tongue. “It is no use
denying it, my feckless poodle! Your Bunbury days are over!” He
paused and smiled wickedly. The frost in his smile I think dropped the
temperature by ten degrees. “Have you ever heard of…SMERSH?”

Of course I’d heard of SMERSH. It was a
Soviet organization (and probably now a Russian “Federal” apparatus) that
assassinated defectors and other wayward Russians, such as journalists. But I
decided to get under Putin’s skin. “SMERSH? Oh, yeah, that’s a kind of Russian
burrito, isn’t it, with ground beef and onions and peppers and anchovies in a
pita pocket?” Putin looked confused. I
added, “I’d heard that the Arabs call it ‘that awful falafel.’” Then I peered
closely into Putin’s eyes. I asked, “Are those contacts? By the way,” I remarked,
touching a patch of his skin just right of his right eye, “your makeup person
missed a spot.”

Putin gritted his teeth, his eyes widened
in the very apotheosis of madness, and a growl rumbled from within the bare
chest that the public knew so well from his exhibitionist exploits. I had a
fleeting thought: If only Viral Vladimir could be persuaded to wrestle a really agitated rhinoceros, Russia might
be saved.

He raised both of his hands to clutch my
neck. They were ice-cold. He began to force me down to my knees. He kept
shouting into my face, mostly in Russian, not a word of which I understood,
except for nyet! He kept repeating nyet repeatedly and rapidly so that he
sounded like Curly of the Three Stooges.

Gasping for air, and as I prepared to deliver
a sucker punch….

I woke up not with a scream, but with a
start, and in a cold sweat.

I glanced at my hands. No longer brown! In the bathroom, I looked in the mirror. I was back to my old self! I was no longer Barack Obama! What a nightmare that was!

I went to the kitchen and poured
myself a tall glass of fortified eggnog. That ought to help put me back to
sleep.

At my desk, waiting for the rum, brandy,
and whiskey to work their magic, I listened to the latest chapters read by the
narrator of Book Two of Sparrowhawk.
By God! I thought. Thefellow’s going to
finish the whole thing before Christmas!

Edward Cline, American Novelist

Edward Cline was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1946. After graduating from high school (in which he learned nothing of value) and a stint in the Air Force, he pursued his ambition to become a novelist. His first detective novel, First Prize, was published in 1988 by Mysterious Press/Warner Books, and his first suspense novel, Whisper the Guns, was published in 1992 by The Atlantean Press. First Prize was republished in 2009 by Perfect Crime. The Sparrowhawk series of novels set in England and Virginia in the pre-Revolutionary period has garnered critical acclaim (but not yet from the literary establishment) and universal appreciation from the reading public, including parents, teachers, students, scholars, and adult readers who believe that American history has been abandoned or is misrepresented by a government-dominated educational establishment. He is dedicated to Objectivism, Ayn Rand's philosophy of reason in all matters.